Twilight
by Yami Hime Hikari
Summary: She goes back sometimes. She knows she shouldn't, that it will just bring pain, but she can't stop herself. She doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong there. So she goes back.


**AN: **Drabble… Tell me what you think and how I can improve it, okay? Thanks!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Spirited Away_.

**Twilight**

Sometimes she would go back to the entrance, when the sky began to bleed.

She knew she shouldn't but sometimes she couldn't help herself. She would just as far as she could, testing herself and her conscience. After all, he had promised they would see each other again. He had never broken a promise to her before. But he had never said she couldn't watch for him. Going back was out of the question: she didn't know if she'd be able to come home and she just _couldn't_ hurt her parents like that, not after all the effort she'd gone through to get them back. So she followed her heart when the loneliness became too much and went _almost_ all the way home. She couldn't risk shattering her heart by leaving the twilight.

The hill was just a hill, though the grass was very long. There was an abandoned amusement park on the other side of the hill and an empty riverbed in between. Nothing special about this place. It was as ordinary as any amusement park built and abandoned in the nineties.

The sun was just touching the horizon as she stepped just beyond the clock tower. _No further,_ she had vowed. _I will not break my promise. I trust him. I will wait. I will not go back._ She refused to acknowledge the thought that always lay beneath those: _I will always be lonely._ She would not let it be real.

She was making friends at her new school, though she was too interested in… other things to create her life around them the way she saw other children doing. School was the only connector she truly had to any of them. They did not see her true heart. She did not truly live around them.

Her parents were happy that she had made friends, but were put out that the one she talked of most and held in the highest regard was the one they had never met. They did not know of her secret, remembering nothing of that Other Time. They only knew that their grumpy, disobedient daughter had become cheerful and more willing to listen to reason and do work when asked. They did not know why, but they had their guesses. She had heard them discussing her personality change. She had no intentions of moving their speculations from deep left field.

He was dark and light combined, placed so close together that she could not see a difference. One belonged with the other. The fair skin, the dark hair, the piercing eyes, the light clothes… it all fit him in a way that would fit no one else. He was like the twilight, where day and night mixed until they were one and the same. The fading of the day always brought him to mind and more often than not, it was his memory that brought her to this place. Her feet returned to the paved area as the grass grew damp. In a moment or two, she would have been calf-deep in water and she knew it. Too many times she had come home from a sunny day, wet nearly to the knees, shoes soaked through. It did not help that she could not explain in such a way that fit with that sunlit world.

Missing those who had helped her and forced her to grow, the young woman moved through the clock tower, keeping an eye on the sun. _I can't get stuck again._ Setting, but no danger yet. Shadows began to move and she did the same, avoiding them as they avoided her. After all, humans smelled something horrid and contact meant contamination. She just wanted to avoid the fuss and risk of being caught.

The woman with the sharp tongue and long hair the color of night was so visible in the girl's memory, but was not among the spirits forming around her now.

The kindly man of the extra appendages and boiler room was a recollection she held close when she realized just how out of place she was in the sunlit world. The light from the boilers in her memory kept the darkness of others' cruelty from hurting too much. After all, she had never truly fit in. She knew pain that those of such a radiant world could not and the darkness marked her as its own.

They would not accept her because she smelled so bad as to scare away business, despite her promises to work hard. She was marked as belonging to the world of sunlight. Humans, such disgusting creatures.

The shadows were becoming more solid and features were almost visible. She could hear the water against the edge of the tower and the creak of ropes as the boat stayed lashed to land for customers to board. Deep into the tower she went, away from windows and reminders of light and its absence.

She fit in neither world. She knew that. But still she wanted it. _Acceptance is not an option,_ she thought to herself, but she was not sure what she was referencing.

It was always daylight when she came here, always bright, sunny days with nary a cloud in the sky. Perhaps she was more likely to give in on those days because they made the differences so much more obvious.

Having a childhood, moving, grumpy about not getting her way, flowers from a friend, parents that cared… There was no real pain there, not unless she pried and prodded and poked and accidentally created some in the process.

Signing a contract, growing up due to necessity, hard work that she wasn't prepared for, learning that a body mattered far less than the soul inside, friends that worried for her but forced her to stand and defend herself on her own… Sometimes the good things were hard to find, but prying and prodding and poking gave her the results she looked for in the night.

It was full dark as she crossed the threshold.


End file.
